A Great Week in the Mountains

About a month ago, Dan, James and I headed into the Southern Alps to climb some stuff. The main objective on this trip was Mt Cook, but we were happy to just have a crack at climbing whatever we could. The weather was amazingly good, too good in fact, with cracking sunny days for over a week and a freezing level that never fell lower than 3,500 m. This meant that we had to look at higher peaks and cross our fingers for a decent overnight freeze.

We did some multi-pitch rock climbing at Sebastopol Bluffs on the Saturday afternoon as a bit of a warm-up for three-person, two-rope climbing techniques (though it was a lot of fun in itself). On Sunday evening we flew in to Plateau Hut at 2,200 m and went to bed hoping for a freeze.

We actually got one and at 3 am we got up to climb Mt Dixon.

Mt Dixon - South Ridge on the left, East Ridge on the right

The conditions up at Cook were actually very bare for the end of November, probably more like typical late December conditions due to the lack of snowfall this winter and the warm weather since. The glaciers are all opening up and the bergshrunds ("schrunds" - big crevasse-type things at the top of snowslopes) have opened up too. Also a lot of stuff had fallen off.

We climbed the slightly harder South Ridge because there was no way onto the East Ridge due to the large shrund at its base, except for traversing the crumbly ridge from Glacier Dome which by all accounts is awful. However, the East Ridge was a suitable descent route because we could just abseil over the shrund.

Working our way through the glacier to the start of our climb actually turned out to be more intricate than we'd expected

On the South Ridge

We did 3 pitches up a snow/ice gully with rock steps onto the crest of the ridge, and a further short ice gully pitch at a step just below the summit. Apart from the strong winds on top (which meant we had to crab our way along, or at best walk very hunched over) the rest was reasonably straightforward and the descent of the East Ridge was quite quick in soft snow.

After a rest day (when there wasn't a decent freeze anyway) we got up at midnight to climb Cook via the Linda Glacier. We didn't get a lot of sleep the night before - due to nervousness, and the fact that we were only in bed for 2 1/2 hours!

Sunrise on the summit rocks



The start of the summit rocks



Past the summit rocks, just the icecap to go. I started to feel the altitude at this point (3,500 m)

Nearly there!

Boys on top. L-R Dan, me, Jim

Just have to get back down now!

Apart from an ice gully at the start, we soloed the summit rocks because they were so dry. This helped a lot with our speed because we were still quite slow pitching as a party of three. We had two ropes for the descent but only did full-length abseils for the last couple of pitches due to the nature of the terrain.

It was so warm that day that I got through at least three litres of water and probably could have drunk twice that. I was sweating a lot but particularly when I was puffing at the higher altitudes. It was completely still on top and I think I could have been quite comfortable in a t-shirt and shorts!

Teichelmann's Corner in the Linda Glacier. It was so soft coming down that I frequently sunk up to my groin and sometimes had to dig my foot out. The only way you could tell if you'd fallen into a hidden crevasse was to look for a bottomless hole where your foot had been once you'd pulled it out.

Fallen into a crevasse or just sunk into deep snow? He probably doesn't know either.

All up it took us 16.5 hours, not bad considering the soft conditions on the way back.

After a day of rest we headed out via Cinerama Col. Another early start was required to make the most of what freeze there was.

4 am and we're on the move


Traversing below the Anzac Peaks

Get our harnesses and warm clothes off for the last time - it's too hot now that it's 7 am and the sun's up!

Tararuas Day Trip - Mt Hector

We had our first venture into the Tararuas at the weekend. We thought we'd do a fairly vigorous day trip to start the training buildup for the World Rogaine Champs in November.

So is the weather always this good in the Tararuas?

A minor hiccup at the start which meant we had to walk an extra 1/2 hr at each end

Butterfly Creek Nighttime Madness

Several months ago Mark and I entered the Butterfly Creek Nighttime Madness cross-country race. It seemed like a good idea. At the race start after dark on a Saturday night in the middle of August, our sanity certainly seemed in question.

The race is done in pairs. For me, this basically meant that Mark was going to have a cruisy race while I was the one pushing myself to the limits. This wasn't helped by the fact I had a cold. I was tempted to pull out but the lack of girls willing to take my place (why is that?) meant I decided just to man up.

The race was 9.75 km and 400 m climb. It started in Eastbourne, winding along through a little native bush track over the ridge, down the creek, over the ridge again and back along the waterfront.

We did really well with a placing of 8th in a time of 1:19:15. I think this was (mainly?) due to our awesome gear. We had our Inov8 'Mudclaws' and my super-duper bright Silva headtorch that my lovely parents bought me for my birthday. With traction and illumination we were able to steam past everyone else slithering into unseen tree roots. I expect they were also intimidated by my impressively loud wheezing.

Don't mess with the mud claws

There was a cut-off point about 4 km from the end that if you didn't make it an hour you'd have to go back the short way. It is a little annoying that this isn't represented in the results, so potentially some of the people above us and lots of the people after us did a much shorter race. Perhaps something they could fix next time!

Queen's Birthday Weekend Tramp to Swamp Swamp

It was a while ago now, but at Queen's Birthday weekend Sylvia and I headed up north to the 'Naki to go tramping and check out a part of the country we hadn't really spent any time in before.

For those of you in the UK, we get a holiday for the Queen's Birthday and you don't. Naff eh!

The weather forecast wasn't too flash but we decided to go anyway because it had been weeks since we got out of Wellington.

We drove north for a few hours on Friday night, strategically timing our departure until after dinner so we avoided the crowds of people leaving Wellington on the long weekend. We ended up sleeping in the back of the car somewhere north of Wanganui.

On Saturday morning we continued our drive to North Egmont visitor centre and didn't actually start tramping until around midday. Our plan was to head along the Pouakai Range (a range of peaks just to the north of Mt Taranaki), spend the night in a hut, then return to the car park the next day via a track around the flank of the mountain.

There were lots of boardwalks and ladders

Including some natural ones

Unfortunately the weather wasn't that good and we didn't get great views of the mountain.

I was lucky enough to snap this shot through a gap in the clouds though.

This is a huge swamp that lies between the Pouakai Range, where we are standing, and Mt Taranaki on the left. We ended our day at Holly Hut which is just to the left of the lava dome behind the swamp.

During the night and the next day it rained with a vengeance (200 mm in 24 hours). It was quite spectacular - I had never before seen water running off, constantly, from every square meter of soil and flowing overland everywhere. Unfortunately it meant that heading back to the car wasn't an option since there were several streams that would be uncrossable.

Our extra day in the hut was an opportunity to get to know our hutmates. Most of them were a group of old boys (and girls) of the Vic Uni Tramping Club and it didn't take long to establish that we had all sorts of mutual friends and acquaintances, and some of us had actually met before. They were kind enough to share their dinner and feminist revisionist poetry with us, as otherwise we would have had to subsist on dried peaches, muesli bars and the normal old misogynistic poetry we usually take tramping.

To ward off cabin fever, we took a walk to the nearby (and normally placid) Bell's Falls. They were really raging and it was quite hard to hear each other speak.

Piers and Jenny, you may notice that Ben is wearing an Oringi parka. He obviously likes it because he is smiling.

When we got out, we were a day late so we went straight to DOC and told them we were out safely. The lady said "oh, they've already started searching for you, I'll go and call them to let them know they can stop looking". We thought it was a bit odd they'd started looking for us, given the weather conditions and that we were only a day late - it turned out that they were actually looking for another couple, but we'd been at the hut with them and could report that they were on their way out and not far behind us. Excitement all round!

From Fish to Water

All good things come to an end, and all too soon my 5-month contract at the Ministry of Fisheries is over and I'm moving onto new pastures (or more likely waterways - I'll now be a water scientist at SKM). I've had a brilliant time, learnt a lot about fish, and amused a lot of people with my @fish.govt.nz email address (what is so funny about that, anyway?).

Everyone knows the time-old tradition of blaming the person who has left for everything that goes wrong so I thought a little bit of culinary bribery would go a long way to offsetting this. I decided on an Orange Roughy cake:

Everyone was impressed, although there were a few comments that they looked a little undersized, and perhaps we should have established a quota system to determine who got the biggest slice.

Also, I cleverly timed my last day with the infamous MFish quiz. With a brilliant team of spatial and data analysts (and an team name I'm too embarrassed to print) we managed to overcome 15-odd teams to end with a very impressive second place, equal with the previous year's champions, the Silo Busters.

SCUBA Diving

Bridget has got into SCUBA diving in a big way, and invited us along to a pool in Petone one Wednesday night to try it out. It was heaps of fun (anything with so many gadgets has to be) and we both had a great time. Once I got over the initial weirdness of breathing through the regulator I was away...although I never did get the hang of keeping my buoyancy right. If you take in a big breath of air you start floating up, let it all out and you hit the bottom!

We both got a bit nauseous after a while, it may have been due to breathing air out of a can, but probably had more to do with the rollie pollies and handstands we were doing on the bottom of the pool!

People just look odd in SCUBA gear:

Southeast Coast

We were going to go to the Tararuas at the weekend, but on Friday night Penny and Jamie rang up to see if we wanted to go to the south-east coast for the weekend instead. Caspar and Nadine are going overseas and this was a sort-of farewell for them (even though they're only going for six weeks).

Caspar and Penny hatched a last-minute plan to hire a bach for a night at Ngawi, near Cape Palliser. [For the overseas readers, a bach is a holiday house]

Would you hire your bach to this guy?

On the way to Ngawi we visited Lake Ferry and the Putangirua Pinnacles. The pinnacles are funky (though a little unstable).

That night we stayed in Kupe's Retreat (actually just a standard bach with a fancy name) and played an epic boys vs girls game of Cranium. Unfortunately I couldn't find my camera so there is no photographic evidence that the girls won. How many people know how to spell "isosceles"?

I also don't have any photos of Caspar, Nadine, Ramesh or Jo! Sorry guys.

The lighthouse at Cape Palliser is probably the most famous thing in this part of the world. It has 250 steps. Boys' stair challenge results: Caspar 0:57, Mark 1:00, Jamie 1:03 (though he didn't haul with his arms).

The landscape was very similar to the southwest coast of the South Island - quite bare, windswept and wild. With lots of seals.

Camping is OK, probably pimping too, but definitely not both at once.

How many seals can you see? We generally smelt them long before we saw them.

Jamie led us up this cool gorge and we found a couple of ropes already attached. We didn't get far but will have to come back with our own ropes and do it in reverse.

I managed to get a bit dirty.

Cakie goodness

Just for something different: a post entirely devoted to food. Not really surprising as Mark and I spent a fair whack of our time in the kitchen making various concoctions. I'm sure many of you have been subjected to our culinary attempts, and given that most of you lived to tell the tale they can't have been that bad.

We don't usually take photos of our creations, but over the past couple of months I've gathered a little collection of some; here is three of the tastiest or most interesting looking cakes:

This is a whole orange cake & almond cake with a white chocolate palisade that I made for Neil Kane's birthday. The title doesn't lie: it involves boiling a whole orange in a pot for an hour before blending it to a fine mush to add to the cake. Can't beat orange and white chocolate!

This was one of my cupcakes for Rosa's cupcake bake0ff (you can see the rest of the entries here: http://culinaryexplorationsnz.blogspot.com/2010/04/first-wellington-bake-off-cupcakes.html). It was entitled cupcakes squared, as it's a cake in a cup in a cake in a cup. Everything apart from the big cup is edible. I'm sure my grandma would be 'tickled' to see her coffee cup set used for such a purpose!

This is another set of cupcakes I made for Charles & Sally's flatwarming. They are banana & chocolate, topped with chocolate buttercream and either a rose, peace lily or daisy. Fair to say I spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon playing at moulding sugar paste...

Gutbuster

In a fit of apparent self-hatred about a month ago, I entered the Gutbuster race. It is a cross-country run around the Karori Sanctuary in Wellington, which as any local would know, is very hilly. It is 11.8km and 400m climb, which might not sound like much to you fitness bunnies out there, but was a reasonable challenge for me.

I did some appropriate preparation, including running the route a couple of weeks beforehand to ensure I wasn't going to collapse halfway in a wobbly pile of unfit jelly. I set myself a goal time of 45 minutes to the Meridian wind turbine and 1hr30 to finish. There was a prize for making the turbine in 35 minutes but prizes are for losers. Or rather, winners, but that's not very motivating. Besides, it was a hat and I don't need a hat.

Here's me at the start of the race:

Note how I'm speculatively looking off to the side to see if there's any way I can sneakily escape without anyone noticing.

From there on it was pretty hard work as my natural competitiveness argued with my lungs over whether I should run faster or slow down. Here's me about 20m from the finishing line:

I appear to be smiling. This was nothing to do with my state of enjoyment, but rather because I've just seen Mark, who came along to support me.

I made it to the wind turbine in 44:10 and finished in 1:20:54, with a (commendable, I think) placing of 28 out of 63 tough-as-nails ladies. And who knows, maybe next year I'll try for a free hat (but if I don't get one remember I said I didn't want one anyway).